It just got harder for Democrats to hold their House majority in 2022
CNN
Just one week after the Census Bureau announced which states would be gaining and losing congressional seats before the 2022 election, the dominoes are beginning to fall -- and the news is not good for Democrats desperately clinging to their single-digit majority in the House of Representatives.
The big blow came last Friday, when Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, one of just seven Democrats who currently represents a district former President Donald Trump won in 2020, announced she would not run again. While Bustos didn't mention redistricting -- and the news that Illinois' delegation will be forced to shrink by a seat before 2022 -- it's hard not see that, plus the fact that there was no obvious statewide office for her to run for, as contributing to her decision to step aside. While Democrats control the line-drawing process in Illinois, it will be tough to draw a Democratic-friendly district in the western Illinois area that Bustos' 17th district covers. (Trump won the 17th in 2020 and 2016.) Which could cost the party a seat that Democrats can ill afford to lose.
The Senate on Wednesday voted down an effort led by Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to block a series of planned US weapons sales to Israel.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.
On one side of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace vowed to “stand in the way” of Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out transgender woman elected to Congress, using women’s bathrooms in the US Capitol.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term, as his pick to be US ambassador to NATO.
Police in Peru have arrested a man caught trying to leave the country with 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants strapped to his body.
Ensuring the US doesn’t default on its obligations. Extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts before they expire. Quarterbacking President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.